


trying to stand the time it takes

by sevendeadlyfun



Category: Magnificent Century, Muhteşem Yüzyıl
Genre: Character Study, Gen, Non-English Source
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-01-23
Updated: 2015-01-23
Packaged: 2018-03-08 18:19:23
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 358
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/3218756
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/sevendeadlyfun/pseuds/sevendeadlyfun
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p><i>She knows that if she could tell him the truth, this young man with the face of his father would understand. He would understand and this would end differently.</i> A look at what Hürrem might be thinking during her argument with Mustafa at the end of episode 52.</p>
            </blockquote>





	trying to stand the time it takes

**Author's Note:**

> This is based solely on the characters as presented in the television show Muhteşem Yüzyıl (The Magnificent Century) and not on any historical figures of the same name. TItle of the story taken from the poem [Eat Rice Have Faith in Women](http://nurseollie.tumblr.com/post/106905335420/eat-rice-have-faith-in-women-by-fran-winant) by Fran Winant.

He doesn’t yell. His voice in fury is so like his father’s, cold and hard. She is fire but Mustafa carries within him an unending winter. He commands her to stay away from his mother, blames her for the blighted childhood spent far from the shelter of his father’s love.

Standing in Valide Sultana’s chamber, with Hatice and Mahidevran and her own daughter staring in horror, she cannot say what she wants to say. She cannot explain properly and she knows that if she could tell him the truth, this young man with the face of his father would understand. He would understand and this would end differently.

You see this with a child’s eyes, she wants to say. Like Mehmet, like Mihrimah, you see only a mother’s tears and not the cause.

You love a woman who suffers as I have done, a woman I sent you, and her you shelter against your mother’s tears.. You see my rage and think it unjust. You did not see my suffering.  I hid it from the world because I would not let my sorrows feed my enemies.

I was once like Efsun Hatun – a young girl, far from home and family, serving a man at the top of the greatest empire in the world. How many times did your mother call me worthless before I stopped holding my tongue? Ten times? One hundred?

She wants to tell Mustafa of her tears, of the beatings she suffered in silence, of the pain in her belly at the sight of food she dared not eat for fear of poison. Your mother, she wants to tell him, cries because she is angry. Your father’s love for me thwarted her will and it is frustrated vanity that gnaws at her heart, not true suffering. Her tears are all for herself and she spares none for anyone else.

But she is not Mahidevran. She will not cry to a child to ease her own hurts. Straightening her spine (and oh, she thinks it aches more every year she must defend against the constant rain of blows), she can only tell him not to interfere.

 

 

 


End file.
